Field Studies Collaborative shapes PRHS students’ futures and provides eye opening experiences
Paso Robles High School has created many avenues to help students pave their future path’s such as SkillsUSA, National Future Farmers of America, and AVID. Field Studies Collaborative is one of the new growing programs that “offer students real academic research experiences outside the classroom,” according to Geoffrey Land, a social studies and FSC teacher.
“Most of the learning you do in life is on your own adventures and experiences outside the classroom,” Land reported.Seven Field Study Collaborative courses are currently available for students; among these are: Joshua Tree National Park Field Biology Research, Santa Cruz Island Field Biology, and Marine Inter-tidal Monitoring Project. Earlier this month, the Ethnic Studies Oral History course took on the task of bringing better recognition to the Native American burial site located in the Walmart shopping center of Paso Robles. The run-down of this course is “to conduct a long term research project to collect oral histories from minority ethnic populations in northern San Luis Obispo County,” the FSC website stated.
Students are able to work alongside field biologists, archaeologists, marine biologists, and science teachers. In the process, the work “extends students’ education” while “getting credits on their transcripts” all at no cost, according to Mark DiMaggio, a retired science teacher and “godfather” of the FSC. These courses are only given to the students in PRHS and are wildly popular throughout the school.
These life changing trips started in the small classroom of Room 409, where the Hiking and Environmental Club, now called “Wilderness Club”, had its first trip into the wilderness about 28 years ago.
“It started out informally a long time ago. In the early ‘90s, the club started taking trips to the Santa Cruz Island and over the years those trips became very successful, amazingly fun, and worth going [to],” DiMaggio reported. Seth Draine, a history teacher, Alisa Bredensteiner, a science engineer teacher, and DiMaggio collaborated their ideas; thus the nature adventures were born. Students were captivated by trips outside their normal world and the school district became interested in these educational trips.
The school district wanted to formalize the trips into a program that could be embedded into students’ transcripts for free. In February of 2017, they decided to fund all the research courses under the Field Studies Collaborative program. These new adventures had impacted so many students’ lives and broadened their perspectives about the world.
“Time and time again, I take myself back to the beauty of these places. From the sweet repose of Joshua Tree, to the rhythmic swell of the Pacific, to the light filtering through a canopy of Ironwood trees,” affirms Nicole Raithel, a former PRHS student. Before the trips were funded and offered with credit, Raithel applied for the trip. “On these trips, you feel connected to the world around you and to the people you’re with. The feeling of belonging, of being a part of something larger than yourself, enlightens the soul,” Raithel expressed.
This past summer, 16 students in the FSC program discovered the oasis of Santa Cruz Island twenty miles away from the coastline.
Bredensteiner, DiMaggio, and Kennedy Gilbert, a new science teacher, all led last summer’s research project, along with other scientists. The students took data on the Bishop Pines, Stipa pulchra, and vegetation plots. They were able to study how climate change is affecting these pines and the vegetation that surrounded them.“These adventures really get down into your soul. If you get enough time on the island it really does impact your life,” DiMaggio expressed.
After various trips, Linnea Schaefer, a former PRHS student, was inspired and her purpose of life became clear to her. She is now studying Integrative Biology with a focus in Evolution and Ecology as a major in UC Berkeley. Schaefer continues her adventures with the help of California Ecology and Conservation (CEC), which is a seven-week-long program. This program is open to students from any UC campus allowing them to travel to UC Natural Reserves all over California. In it, Schaefer conducted three research projects and wrote two scientific papers. The project “helped me grow a lot as a person and extended my educational experiences,” Schaefer said.
The Field Study Collaborative program is hands-on learning courses, as is aptly described by Land, “the bigger picture is that life is all about learning and sharing that learning with other people. Don’t pass up this opportunity; it may change your life.”